Joe Eszterhas was twenty-five years old and had been with the Cleveland Plain Dealer for three years when he co-wrote this book. In 1968 he received the Cleveland Press Club Award and the Ohio Associated Press Award for his coverage of the Silver Bridge disaster. In 1969 he wrote the Life magazine account of the My Lai massacre; in 1970 he received the Associated Press Award for his six-part series. He was a senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine from 1971 to 1975. He has written screenplays for several major Hollywood movies, including Basic Instinct in 1992, and has written several other nonfiction books, including Hollywood Animal, an autobiography, and Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith.